Friday, 8 March 2013

My Name is Kate and I'm an Internet Addict

Last night, around midnight, my husband came
to bed to find me browsing on my laptop. He accused me of being addicted to my
‘screen/internet. It’s not the first time he’s said it. We had a row because I
was reading an article, which somehow did not feel like browsing the internet
in a random manner, but he has a point. The truth is that since writing these
last four sentences, I have already been on facebook, and then checked my
emails. Facebook was to ostensibly check a post about another author who is
addicted to the internet and checking email is just force of habit - I am
expecting a reply from son’s school – well that is the excuse, that is what I
believe.

Apparently some authors including, Nick
Hornby and Sadie Smith use programmes such as Freedom to restrict their
internet use while they are writing. I imagined cutting off my internet and
shuddered with horror. What about all the research I need to do? The author of The Corrections,Jonathan Franzen once said,“It’s doubtful that anyone
with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.” I
remember at the time it struck a cord, and it still does.

The fact is I finished my last novel in
January, and have done nothing really about starting anything else – I do waste
a considerable amount of time browsing - sometimes an hour passes and I’m not
sure where the time has gone. I don’t want to go cold turkey but I must. Or I need the discipline to have a set time in the day to check emails and go online rather than
cruising randomly throughout the day.

I have just downloaded the
software to start this experiment. Perhaps I will at last be able to start my
fourth novel. My new software is now installed (see I couldn’t wait to finish
this writing before googling Freedom and installing it) It's installed for one hour (small steps). This feels rather liberating, although
I had already planned to go out in fifteen minutes!